What would you think of a State with a separate government for those possessing a certain level of ethnic purity - a State that transfers public assets, land, and political power from ethnically impure citizens to ethnically purer ones?
Shameful?
Unconscionable?
Morally backward?
Hawaii?
Yep. I thought we covered all this in the 60's. Ahh, progress.
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UPDATE:
Here's an Op-Ed from the WSJ explaining the lunacy of this bill more fully.
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It took me way to long to find the full text of this bill - www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s111-1011
ReplyDelete...but it's bed time. Out of curiosty, what parts of this are more / different than Native American legislation and districting.
Lots of differences explained in the links above, but basically it boils down to this: Indian tribes had existing governments when the U.S. Government was founded and absorbing their systems into ours was completely impractical.
ReplyDelete"Native Hawaiians" who "constitute neither a coherent tribe nor a continuous political entity" are in a totally different situation. They're less like an Indian tribe and more like Louisiana Creoles - so while their traditions can influence their form of government within the U.S. government, they can't essentially have their own country.
The result of this legislation would be to allow any group loosely tied by geographical or cultural similarities to demand the right to govern themselves apart from the will of the American people as a whole. That's a great idea.
Interestingly, if this bill were held constitutional (I don't think it would be - but it might) I can't think of any coherent reason to claim that Texas doesn't have a lawful right to make our government unanswerable to the U.S. government. We were our own country before we agreed to join the U.S., and we're culturally distinct (clearly).
Fair enough. Just a couple things...
ReplyDelete1. The links above aren't exactly impartial which is what I was looking for.
2. I think after you go to Hawaii you will see the native Hawaiians are probably somewhere between the Creole's and the Native Americans. There are spots on Kauai where tribes lived with a king until around the 1950s. But there lies the rub, my little knowledge of Hawaii shows it is a bunch of small tribes due to geography, not one large one. I'm sure there is some overlap between islands - but there can't be much. It's a unique situation that could be addressed through thoughtful legislation.
I'd be hesitant to characterize as "thoughtful" any legislation that defined the legal rights of certain groups purely on the basis of race.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm pretty sure the Supreme Court will have the same reservations. They generally frown on that.